Donor Relations Guru: Dear fundraiser, an open letter from your friend in donor relations

Donor Relations Guru: Dear fundraiser, an open letter from your friend in donor relations: irst, I'm here to help. I come from a place of yes, and I want others to as well. I'm excellent with details and rules and can navigate bureaucratic nightmares swiftly like a water moccasin. I'm a people pleaser who just needs a little positive affirmation and some team work and wow can I move mountains for you. I seem to be able to pull of the impossible, and deliver it with a smile. Behind the scenes I'm sometimes exhausted and frustrated, it's just reality, but I sure do love what I do.

How to Set Up a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog

How to Set Up a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog: Last week, I asked you how I could be of help.

Of the hundreds of responses I received, many of you said you were itching to learn how to start a successful blog.

Crowdfunding Fuels Philanthropy

Crowdfunding Fuels Philanthropy: Crowdfunding is a rapidly expanding Internet tool designed to allow large numbers of people to invest or contribute money in support of new businesses, people in need, interesting ideas or important causes. Its recent growth is impressive.

11 Ways Your Museum Should be using Twitter | npENGAGE

11 Ways Your Museum Should be using Twitter | npENGAGE: recently read “The Social Media Police: Nonprofit Edition.” In it the authors discussed how you should use social media at a nonprofit and it made me curious about how museums are using Twitter. So I did the logical thing and started researching.

The Gibbes Museum of Art, for example, does a great job of using Twitter to share announcements about exhibits, raise awareness for their events, and start conversations with groups scheduled to attend the museum (see below)…

Poor suffer digital deficit in disasters - Red Cross

Poor suffer digital deficit in disasters - Red Cross: In its annual World Disasters Report, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) charts the revolutionary impact of technology on humanitarian aid, but also explores the barriers to its adoption.

From text message warnings about coming storms and mobile apps telling survivors where to find relief, to online services that map needs in crises and digital collection of data on health or displaced families, the global expansion of mobile telephones and the internet has enabled two-way communication between people hit by disasters and the aid workers who help them.

12 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Instagram and Vine Video

12 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Instagram and Vine Video: When someone says “video marketing” to you, what comes to mind?

An expensive, lavish 20 minute epic mini-movie that crams in every single historical fact and statistics about your nonprofit?
A large, unwieldy budget and a big-time production studio?
Do you simply throw up your hands and declare: “My nonprofit is too small – we can’t use video in our marketing strategy”

What Should Make A Hospital CEO's Paycheck Bigger? | KERA News

What Should Make A Hospital CEO's Paycheck Bigger? | KERA News: CEOs of technology-happy nonprofit hospitals earned $136,000 more, on average, than those with little advanced machinery, according to the study published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. CEOs at places with high patient satisfaction scores earned $52,000 more, on average, than those with poor reviews.

4 Steps Toward Open Data Business Models

4 Steps Toward Open Data Business Models: By now, ‘open data for the social sector,’ ‘open data for the public sector,’ or ‘open data for hackers’ all roll quasi-easily off the tongue. The concept of ‘open data business models,’ on the other hand, still has many experts in the field scratching their heads.

The Big Picture for Associations

The Big Picture for Associations

How Bad Website Design Leads to Distrust

How Bad Website Design Leads to Distrust: Look, I like a good cognitive challenge as much as anyone. But I want it in a good way, not a waste-my-time kind of way.

And that is what many websites are creating for their users. But, bad website design is not just causing impatience and irritation for your visitors, it's actually causing them to lose trust in your organization.

Comic Relief offers gift aid software to other charities

Comic Relief offers gift aid software to other charities: Comic Relief will offer its gift aid claim software to other charities for free from next week, after some charities revealed they might miss the deadline to update their systems.

The HMRC-accredited Gift Aid Interface Linked software will be available to other charities from 18 October on an open source basis, and IT managers should be able to integrate the software into their existing systems.

Sandee Jackson | The Most Exhaustive Guide EVER to free photos for your blog

Sandee Jackson | The Most Exhaustive Guide EVER to free photos for your blog: If there’s a question I’m always asked about blogging, it’s this one –

Where do I find free photos for my blog?

It’s a great question. Not all of us have the means to fork out the money for paid stock photography, and many of us also don’t have the time or the means (or even the interest) to take photos ourselves. If you’re swiping images you find through Google searches and adding them to your blog, you’re not linking with love, and you could be breaking the law!

The state of social media in associations and what to do about it – XYZ University

The state of social media in associations and what to do about it – XYZ University: We hear over and over again that associations are struggling to recruit, retain and engage young members in their organizations. And, according to Marketing General’s 2013 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, 74% of responding associations indicated that increasing member engagement is a top membership goal. Yet, according to the report, among the top three reasons cited for members not renewing is lack of engagement with the organization.

Let the games begin | The NonProfit Times

Let the games begin | The NonProfit Times: During the 2013 Bridge to Integrated Marketing conference, Jeremy Ryan of Lipman Hearne offered the idea of making fundraising fun, by applying gamification.

Gamification sounds like one of those words people make up to express some kind of bizarre concept. Actually, the word comes from an Englishman named Nick Pelling, a computer programmer and inventor, and means the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context to engage users and solve problems. It is used in applications and processes to improve user engagement, return on investment, data quality, timeliness and learning.

Social Media Gets Word Out, Rumors Still Fly | The NonProfit Times

Social Media Gets Word Out, Rumors Still Fly | The NonProfit Times: When Hurricane Katrina hot New Orleans and ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005, Twitter was still a few months from being born and Facebook was still a crawling infant. There were smartphones but they too were not yet real mobile devices.

Still, technology helped provide better communications among rescue workers and public safety officials through ad hoc wireless networks, voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP)-based phone networks, and solar- and battery-powered equipment that provided police radio capabilities.

Much has changed since then.